HC hears ‘no defection’ defence
BRS challenges Speaker’s rejection of 10 disqualification pleas; petitioners say contesting on Congress ticket is quitting by conduct, resignation or not.
The High Court is examining whether conduct can amount to voluntarily giving up party membership.
The Telangana High Court on August 12 continued hearing challenges to Speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar’s rejection of disqualification pleas against 10 MLAs. The bench of Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh and Justice G.M. Mohiuddin is examining whether the Speaker, acting as a tribunal, could wave the cases through as “no legal defection” when petitioners say the conduct says otherwise. According to the report from court, the Speaker and the 10 MLAs are respondents.
Senior counsel Vivek Reddy, for the petitioners including BRS MLAs G. Jagadish Reddy, K.P. Vivekanand, K. Sanjay, P. Rajeshwar Reddy, Chinta Prabhakar and Padi Kaushik Reddy, and BJP’s Aleti Maheshwar Reddy, argued a basic Tenth Schedule point: you don’t need a resignation letter to quit your party — you can quit it by how you act. Contesting on another party’s ticket and campaigning for it, they said, can amount to “voluntarily giving up” membership. In Danam Nagender’s case, they cited the Gazette recording his BRS election and his subsequent Congress Lok Sabha candidacy, with Form-26 on record. Counsel Gandra Mohan Rao said videos and media material placed before the Speaker exist and asked that they be produced for the High Court.
This scrap exists because the Supreme Court had already told Telangana to finish these 10 cases in three months — and to not let the MLAs spin it out. The Speaker did finish: by dismissing them, including Danam Nagender and Kadiyam Srihari’s on March 11, 2026, on the ground that “legal defection” was not proven. The High Court has since issued notice in at least one of those challenges and directed some respondents — including Nagender and Bandla Krishna Mohan Reddy — to file counters. The petitioners say the Speaker wandered into irrelevancies like government stability and party headcounts instead of the only test that matters.
The legal question is clean: does crossing the aisle in practice count as quitting, even if the letterhead stays put? The BJP and Congress both know the answer when it suits them. The Tenth Schedule was written for this exact theatre; the Congress’s benefit from these MLAs doesn’t make the law disappear.